Creative solutions from H&R Block, PRSA, Cole Haan

H&R Block

Situation

H&R Block wanted to engage the Hispanic community and capture market share during tax season with a search marketing effort, but a PPC campaign focused only on Spanish-language terms would miss a large percentage of Hispanics who search in English.

Approach

H&R Block worked with 360i to create Spanish-language search ad creative, mostly on Google, tailored to the Hispanic demographic about tax preparation. The work ran during tax season, January through April 15. The strategy was based on research data on how the Hispanic market searched online.

"Understanding how Latinos are searching and seeking information is key so that we can deliver relevant information," an H&R Block spokesperson tells DMNews.

In addition to PPC ads geared toward Spanish-language searchers, 360i also honed in on Spanish tax keywords and geographic locations, and expanded the campaign into Google's contextual and site targeting networks. This allowed H&R Block to capture increased volume and reach more of its target audience, including Hispanics who rarely conduct searches in Spanish.

Public Relations Society of America

Approach

The Public Relations Society of America enhanced its Jobcenter Web site with increased functionality and wanted to draw more viewers. It worked with TopRank Online Marketing on a search engine optimization initiative to identify target market keywords, opportunities for code level optimization, crawling and indexing issues, as well as content that would meet the needs of candidates searching for specific PR jobs.

Results

The Jobcenter is now the No. 1 Google search result for the term "public relations jobs." Page views are up 40%. -Nathan Golia

Cole Haan

Approach

Cole Haan turned to Range Online Media to align its digital properties to acquire new customers and increase site conversion and revenue. Range ran a PPC search campaign aimed at acquiring, educating and converting new customers. The agency worked with Cole Haan's marketing, IT and merchandising divisions to improve both natural search rankings and layout of existing and prospective products.

The H&R Block case study demonstrates a classic example of identifying opportunities through research. This type of segmentation allows marketers to narrow their focus and deliver messages that resonate with their audience. The success of any search campaign is dependent on relevance. By knowing their audience and the channels they use, H&R Block was able to craft campaigns with very specific messages that spoke directly to their customers.

Search engine optimization can be too dependent on keywords and metadata. While keywords are certainly fundamental to how search engines operate, many other components are often overlooked. The PRSA Jobcenter case study illustrates the importance of both visitor intent and usability. Driving traffic to a site through optimized pages is one thing, but it's the user experience that determines whether or not visitors will refer the site to others. This means more backlinks, which can further translate into better search rankings.

Blogger outreach is an ideal way to drive traffic to a Web site. It's good for link building, which of course is good for SEO. By establishing a relationship with bloggers, Cole Haan was able to tap into a community of loyal readers across multiple domains. These readers or fellow bloggers can potentially become customers or help spread the word. Having such links from a diverse, yet very relevant range of sites is valuable to its overall organic search efforts, which in turn leads to more traffic and ultimately higher conversions.